Effective dashboard data decision making starts not with visuals, but with questions.
There was a client I worked with where every team was flying their own plane. Product had a dashboard. Marketing had a dashboard. Ops had a dashboard. Each one was built on whatever tool the team liked best: Tableau, Looker, Power BI, even Google Sheets tricked out with charts and colors. And each dashboard was technically doing its job.
But none of them agreed with each other.
Why teams struggle to align dashboard metrics
One team would flag a metric as up. Another would say the same metric was flatlining. People would spend entire meetings arguing about numbers instead of acting on them. Why? Because they weren’t pulling from the same data. Every dashboard had its own flavor of the truth.
And here’s the kicker: the teams didn’t think the dashboards were broken. They thought the other teams’ dashboards were broken.
This is what happens when dashboards are built around tools instead of decisions. When every team builds their own version of reality based on what feels easy, or familiar, or cool.
Asking the right questions for dashboard data decision making
We had to start from the bottom. Not with a prettier dashboard, but with shared questions. What decisions do we all need to make? Do we actually trust our metrics? What data sources are real, and which ones are stitched together with duct tape and prayer?
Once we aligned on that, the rest got simpler. We consolidated tools. Built one system everyone could access. Designed the dashboard backwards, from decision to insight to data. Not the other way around.
Fixing your mindset around dashboard data
It wasn’t just a visual fix. It was a mindset shift. Dashboards stopped being places to defend your team’s story and started being a shared source of clarity.
So if your dashboard feels off, maybe it’s not the design. Maybe it’s the questions.
Start with this: What decision are you actually trying to make?
Because until you answer that, no dashboard, no matter how pretty, is going to help you.
For more on structuring dashboards around decision goals, check out this excellent guide on Medium, which walks through defining your dashboard’s purpose, targeting end users, choosing metrics that matter, and refining visuals to support actual decisions.
Need help aligning your dashboard for real decisions?
We help teams turn scattered data into shared insight, starting with the right questions. If your dashboards are causing more confusion than clarity, let’s talk. Contact us for a strategy session and start building dashboards that drive action, not arguments.
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